3-D printing could become a powerful tool in customizing interventional radiology treatments to individual patient needs, with clinicians having the ability to construct devices to a specific size and shape. That's according ...

(HealthDay)—Newly approved anticancer drugs that do not have a specific molecular target on cancer cells are associated with increased toxicity and the accompanying costs of management, according to research ...

(HealthDay)—In acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), tumor vulnerability to different chemotherapeutic agents varies at different stages of clonal evolution, which could represent a viable strategy in avoiding ...

(Medical Xpress)—The prognosis for ovarian cancer patients is poor with only 3 out of 10 women living at least 5 years after diagnosis. Clinicians urgently need the tools to provide a more accurate prognosis ...

Chemotherapy is one of the primary treatments for cancer. However, one of the most disturbing findings of recent studies of cancer survivors is the apparent prevalence of chemotherapy-associated adverse neurological effects, ...

A novel, targeted approach to chemotherapy that makes ovarian cancer cells more susceptible to the cytotoxic effects of an antitumor drug may offer a safer, more effective treatment option for this often ...

The function of the mitochondria – also defined as "power plants" within the cells – is essential as to whether, and how, some chemotherapeutic agents take effect in tissue. Scientists at the Helmholtz ...

A study led by Robert G. Hawley, Ph.D., professor and chair of the department of anatomy and regenerative biology at the George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS), may help predict which ...

New research demonstrates the efficacy of the first curative treatment for acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) that does not include chemotherapy, marking an important step toward front-line use of targeted therapies for acute ...

An Inserm team in Dijon directed by François Ghiringhelli is to publish an article this week in the Nature Medicine review. The article suggests that two chemotherapy drugs frequently used to treat digestive and breast cancers ...

This month, Molecular Pharmaceutics reported promising findings from the Nemours Center for Childhood Cancer Research and the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Delaware, about the potential for na ...

There are plenty of effective anticancer agents around. The problem is that, very often, they cannot gain access to all the cells in solid tumors. A new gene delivery vehicle may provide a way of making tracks to the heart ...

Few available treatment options exist once prostate cancer has spread to other parts of the body and has failed to respond to therapies that involve blocking the male hormone androgen. Patients with advanced, hormone-refractory ...

Blocking the action of a particular protein in our skin could improve the treatment of skin cancers, according to a study published in Oncogene yesterday by Philippe Roux, a researcher at the University of Montreal's Instit ...

Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death in Europe and the world, and early detection and treatment remains vital in the fight. Researchers in Norway have validated a method of non-invasive imaging that they believe ...

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy, in its most general sense, refers to treatment of disease by chemicals that kill cells, both good and bad, but specifically those of micro-organisms or cancerous tumours. In popular usage, it refers to antineoplastic drugs used to treat cancer or the combination of these drugs into a cytotoxic standardized treatment regimen. In its non-oncological use, the term may also refer to antibiotics (antibacterial chemotherapy). In that sense, the first modern chemotherapeutic agent was Paul Ehrlich's arsphenamine, an arsenic compound discovered in 1909 and used to treat syphilis. This was later followed by sulfonamides discovered by Domagk and penicillin discovered by Alexander Fleming.

Most commonly, chemotherapy acts by killing cells that divide rapidly, one of the main properties of cancer cells. This means that it also harms cells that divide rapidly under normal circumstances: cells in the bone marrow, digestive tract and hair follicles; this results in the most common side effects of chemotherapy—myelosuppression (decreased production of blood cells), mucositis (inflammation of the lining of the digestive tract) and alopecia (hair loss).

Other uses of cytostatic chemotherapy agents (including the ones mentioned below) are the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis and the suppression of transplant rejections (see immunosuppression and DMARDs). Newer anticancer drugs act directly against abnormal proteins in cancer cells; this is termed targeted therapy.